A common practice in gathering strand material from a plurality of sources to form a combined strand material is to provide a plurality of sources of the strand material and to feed or direct the output from the sources, commonly called feeder strands, to a common point, such as a gathering shoe. Subsequently, the combined strands are directed toward a rotating roll means such as a cot roll. The strand is directed to be wrapped around the roll means with sufficient friction to enable the combined strand to be pulled by the rotation of the rotating roll means. The rotating roll means can be a winder, pull wheel, or the cot roll of a chopper for forming discrete fibers or chopped strand.
One of the problems associated with winding or chopping operations in which strands are gathered from a plurality of sources is that interruptions in the supply of feeder strands from the sources occasionally occur. Such interruptions necessitate the reintroduction of the interrupted feeder strand to the combined strand subsequent to the restart of the interrupted source of feeder strand material. Attempts to reintroduce a single feeder strand into the combined strand material by manually wrapping the feeder strand to be introduced onto the rotating roll means have been generally unsuccessful. The roll means usually travels at such a high rate of speed that reintroduction of the feeder strand at the normal operating rotational speeds of the primary attenuation means is difficult, if not impossible.
In a present fiber gathering operation, the process for adding a feeder strand to a combined strand involves the slowing down of the roll means to a rotational rate suitable for the successful addition of the feeder strand to the combined strand. Such a method is undesirable in that the slowing down of the roll means can affect the quality of the combined strand produced. For example, the slowing down of a pull wheel or cot roll in a continuous glass fiber forming operation can change the diameter and other characteristics of the glass fibers, thereby adversely affecting the quality of the glass fibers. Accordingly, the combined strand formed during temporary periods of lower attenuation speed is frequently scrapped. There is a need for a method and apparatus for applying a feeder strand to a combined strand without affecting the quality of the combined strand.